‘There are worse Smiths fans than David Cameron. One of them is Morrissey’
Photograph: Samir Hussein/Redferns via Getty Images

Remember when Johnny Marr banned David Cameron from liking the Smiths? Sure you do. Cameron picked This Charming Man as a choice on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs and in response Marr tweeted: “David Cameron, stop saying that you like the Smiths, no you don’t. I forbid you to like it.” And that was just a young, cool, fag-smoking, festival-going remoaner with a tattooed wife and an expensive shed on wheels in his back garden. There are far worse Smiths fans than Cameron. One of them, for example, is Morrissey.

I keep refreshing Marr’s Twitter account to see when he’s going to ban Morrissey from liking the Smiths. Perhaps you heard the latest. During a live set being broadcast on BBC 6 Music to promote his new album this week, Morrissey decided to veer away from traditionally appropriate crowd patter such as, “This is a new song,” and “Woo!” to gravely discuss his views on the Ukip leadership contest. “I was very surprised the other day – it was very interesting to me – to see Anne Marie Waters become the head of Ukip,” he said, before adding: “Oh no, sorry, she didn’t. The voting was rigged. Sorry, I forgot.”

The response? Silence. Absolute, world-swallowing silence from the crowd, all of whom seemed utterly mortified. They were supposed to be having a fun afternoon out, watching the singer from their favourite teenage band tear through some classics, and instead they found themselves being subjected to Bad Moz and His Suspect Politics. “Ukip” just isn’t a word with which to win over a 6 Music audience. “I like secondhand corduroy jackets,” yes. “I miss the Soup Dragons,” yes. Swivel-eyed conspiracy theories about far-right parties not electing a leader with a talent for being cruel to specific religions, less so.

It’s got to the point that just reading the track list of his new album – including songs titles such as The Girl from Tel Aviv Who Wouldn’t Kneel, Who Will Protect Us from the Police? and Israel – is enough to send your sphincter zooming up through your intestines and into your windpipe.

So it’s little wonder that Morrissey has joined Twitter. As evidenced by the swirling, suffocating silence that met his Ukip crack this week, this might just mark the moment when Morrissey fans transition from their default he-always-gets-like-this-after-a-sherrystance of old to simply backing out altogether.

If Morrissey needs a new audience for his shtick, he’ll certainly find it on Twitter, a realm brimming with eggs who live purely to encourage wrongheaded public idiots to keep telling it like it is. Twitter primarily functions as a way to remind you that every celebrity you’ve ever liked is awful, so it’s bound to play to all of Morrissey’s strengths. Right now, his account is dedicated purely to impersonal album promotion, but he’ll soon enough realise its potential for crackpot shrieking, and then we’ll all be doomed. Morrissey on Twitter is an unexploded bomb.

So it’s time for an intervention. Johnny Marr, protector of all that is right and good about the Smiths, we need you like never before. If you can banish Cameron to the wastelands, forcing him to salvage whatever meagre delights he can from the Mighty Lemon Drops, surely you can do the same to Morrissey. Just one tweet, that’s all it would take. “I forbid Morrissey from liking the Smiths.” That’s it. Then we can band together, Samwell Tarly and all, and breathe a sigh of relief knowing that our enjoyment of a perfectly good band won’t once again be tainted by the lunk-headed ravings of a professional irritant like Morrissey.